Florida Gulf Coast seizes attention of tournament field

Mar. 24, 2013
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Florida Gulf Coast Eagles head coach Andy Enfield with his players in a time out in second half during game with the Georgetown Hoyas in the second round of the NCAA tournament at the Wells Fargo Center. / Eileen Blass, USA TODAY Sports

by Jack Carey, USA TODAY Sports

by Jack Carey, USA TODAY Sports

PHILADELPHIA - By how much has Florida Gulf Coast stolen the spotlight on the first weekend of the NCAA tournament?

Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, whose team beat FGCU early in the regular season, spent about half his news conference Saturday talking about the team everyone is buzzing about. Never mind that Duke is in a different regional than the Eagles and meets Creighton on Sunday.

"I'm not playing them," Krzyzewski reminded reporters, with a laugh, after about a half-dozen questions concerning the Cinderella Eagles came his way.

It's a new world for the Eagles, but one they seem happy and comfortable to reside in.

The number of text messages and phone calls FGCU coach Andy Enfield had received since Friday's 78-68 upset of second-seeded Georgetown was at "450 and counting" as of Saturday afternoon.

"I have not begun to respond to most of them because I've been too busy with film work," Enfield said. "I have three children with me on my trip, my 2-year-old son (Marcum) kept me up all night, got about an hour of sleep. But that's all part of it. It's fun."

If the Eagles keep playing the way they did against the Hoyas, Enfield might not get much sleep for weeks.

Next up is Sunday's third-round South Regional game against seventh-seeded San Diego State (23-10) with a trip to the Sweet 16, where no 15th seed has ever been, awaiting the winner.

And even the Aztecs, who eliminated Oklahoma on Friday, acknowledged they were caught up in the excitement as they watched the last few minutes of the FGCU-Georgetown game before taking the court.

"I felt like a fan at the time," said SDSU forward DeShawn Stephens. "It was exciting. I was just watching it, and I didn't really think about that's who we would play next."

But play them the Aztecs will. And anybody who thinks the Eagles (25-10) will still have their heads in the clouds, thinking about Georgetown, when it comes time to play San Diego State has another thing coming, Eagles point guard Brett Comer said.

"Nothing is distracting us. We're focused and here to win games and go as far as we can."

While many fans might not have known a thing about Florida Gulf Coast until this weekend, San Diego State coach Steve Fisher has been very familiar with the school, which just opened its doors to students in 1997.

Fisher has owned a condominium on Fort Myers Beach, a short distance from the FGCU campus, for 23 years. His former grad assistant at Michigan, Dave Balza, was FGCU's coach before Enfield.

While Florida Gulf Coast became just the seventh 15th seed to win a tournament game with Friday's victory, the accomplishment was not a surprise to second-year coach Enfield and his group of lightly recruited players.

Enfield is a man with a plan, and it's coming together in a hurry.

A former player at Division III Johns Hopkins (Md.), where he was the program's all-time scoring leader and set an NCAA record with a 92.5% career free throw conversion rate, Enfield has long been known as a shooting guru.

His shooting expertise and instructional videos helped get him assistant coaching jobs with the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics, but he also had a great business acumen, helping to start up a contract management service for the health-care industry, called TractManager, which made him a fortune on Wall Street.

Seven years ago, he decided to move to the coaching ranks full time, taking an assistant's job at Florida State.

After learning about building a program from Seminoles coach Leonard Hamilton, Enfield was ready to step out on his own. Two years ago, he moved to FGCU, which was entering its fifth year of Division I basketball and trying to make a name for itself in the Atlantic Sun Conference.

Playing an up-tempo, pedal-to-the-metal style in an era where scores in the 50s are common, FGCU reached the Atlantic Sun tournament final last year and won 15 games, its most since joining Division I.

But that was nothing like what's happened this month, with a conference championship and now one of the more memorable upsets in NCAA history among Enfield's credentials.

Enfield also is married to supermodel Amanda Marcum Enfield, who gave up her jet-setting career to become a coach's wife and raise their children.

"What a sacrifice she has made," the appreciative coach said.

Enfield has heard a lot of jokes this week about how he's lived a charmed life - one story called him the most interesting man in the world - but he's quick to point to his players as the key reason for the team's ascension.

Players such as Comer, A-Sun player of the year Sherwood Brown, sophomore guard Bernard Thompson and junior forward Chase Fieler, might not have been recruited by national powers, but they're adept at competing with them.

"We have some of the most improved players in the country on our team this year," Enfield said. "They've made huge jumps. â?¦ To be at this point in two years, we didn't lay that out, but it's not unexpected to me. We didn't come in as a staff and say we need to win our league in two years. We said we're going to show up every day and every week, and make this program better than it was.

"We had no time to frame this, but we're very fortunate to be in this place after two short years."